Saadaoui and Hussein twice posed as tourists at the White Cliffs National Trust nature reserve near Dover to observe the security checks at the port below, believing the weapons would be imported from France by the undercover officer.
Harpreet Sandhu KC, for the prosecution, told the jury it “hardly had the innocence of a teddy bears’ picnic”.
Saadaoui, a former hotel entertainer originally from Tunisia, married an English woman called Jane and moved to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 2012 and then to Great Yarmouth. He worked in the shop at the Haven Holiday Park and later bought the Albatross restaurant.
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In 2023 he moved to Wigan with his second wife, Michelle, and two young children. He worked briefly at a discount store, then gave up work, claimed universal credit and regularly posted statements from Isis on Facebook.
He started emptying his bank accounts, withdrawing £88,500 in cash, wrote a will and made approaches to criminal contacts in an attempt to get hold of a firearm.
His posts drew the attention of MI5 and on November 28, 2023, they initiated Operation Catogenic, described by police as the “largest scale and most complex covert counterterrorism investigation ever conducted in the northwest”.
Investigators believe Saadaoui was already preparing to launch an attack. Farouk, the undercover officer, told his bosses he feared Saadaoui would “kill a lot of people” if they did not intervene.
In a voice note to the undercover police officer sent on Christmas Day 2023, Saadaoui said: “These matters of running someone over with a car or using a knife is ineffective; what is needed is an automatic gun. We want to do the same as what Abaaoud done, god willing. We must run rivers of their impure blood.”
On February 15 Saadaoui met Farouk in Queen’s Park in Bolton to discuss their plans to smuggle weapons into the country. Saadaoui told Farouk he wanted to rub the blood of his victims on his body and added: “If we were to carry out this operation, we target the Jews. We start with the Jews and if there are any Christians caught in the act, that is a bonus, but we start with the Jews.”
Saadaoui and Hussein were on trial alongside Saadaoui’s younger brother, Bilel, 36, from Hindley, Greater Manchester, who was said to have turned down the opportunity to take part in the attacks but received a copy of his brother’s will and the key to a hidden safe containing money for his brother’s family. He was found guilty of failure to disclose information about an act of terrorism.
They will be sentenced in February.
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